Media, University of Warwick
Thesis title:
My project concerns the intersection between documentary and serial form. Long form documentary seems to be booming in both quantity and popularity in the contemporary media environment, and despite the wave of scholarly interest in seriality in dramatic forms, there has so far been little research into a) how serial form is textually manifest in documentary, b) how these elements affect the ways in which documentary has historically been conceived as primarily an educational, rather than entertaining, form, and c) whether these elements have changed over time. I aim to fill this gap through close analyses of serial documentary programmes, ranging from Paul Watson’s observational series The Family and Sylvania Waters, to docu-soaps such as The Cruise and Driving School, longitudinal documentaries, and contemporary true crime documentary serials like Making a Murderer and Tiger King. By closely analysing the interaction between serial narration and documentary style in these programmes, I attend to their place in the information-entertainment binary and the modes of viewer engagement which they invite in their viewers.
I am a member of Warwick's Centre for Television Histories, and a member of BAFTSS.
In the 2021-2022 academic year, I led seminars on the second-year core module Classical Hollywood and the second and third-year optional module Queer Screens.